Ex Astris Gloria
by alienyouthct
Summary: When the true nature of the Veil of Death is finally discovered, Harry and Luna embark on a journey unlike anything they could have possibly imagined. An authorized reimagining of Lightning among the Stars, featuring more plot and less mustache twirling and harem-building. Harry/Luna
1. Chapter 1

Title: _Ex Astris Gloria  
><em>Author: JoeHundredaire  
><span>Rating:<span> R/FR18  
><span>Disclaimer:<span> J.K. Rowling owns the _Harry Potter_ universe. Wish they were mine so I could do increasingly nonsensical things to them and watch my bank account get steadily larger, but sadly not mine. BioWare owns _Mass Effect_, its sequels, its characters, its worlds, and all related concepts. And Disney and Pixar own their lovely ladies. Not mine, don't sue, et cetera and so forth.  
><span>Summary:<span> When the true nature of the Veil of Death is finally discovered, Harry and Luna embark on a journey unlike anything they could have possibly imagined.  
><span>Joe's Note:<span> By now, people should really know better than to go 'if you think you can do better, do it'. Because I just take that as a challenge, and challenges are meant to be accepted. To clear some of the foul air floating around the recent chapters of his fic, I am one of people - if not THE person - who tore apart a half-dozen major holes in _Lightning among the Stars_ by Leonineus. He was then dumb enough to post screenshots of our private conversations to a fiction group we were both a member of, at which point I degraded him further for being a whiny bitch about it and then others tossed in their two cents. He threw up his hands and told me to do better if I could before taking his lengthy sulk. So I am.  
><span>Dedications &amp; Thanks:<span> To Nicholas, Jess, Jessica, and Christopher for sponsoring me on Patreon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

* * *

><p>Oh, the difference ten years made.<p>

That was the thought running through Harry Potter's mind as he deftly navigated the almost labyrinthine halls of the Department of Mysteries, making his way toward the Death Chamber. As a fifth year, he'd stumbled upon the chamber - and the veil within - after sneaking into the Ministry with his friends. Nowadays, he was an Unspeakable and being well paid to come in each day and prod at the thing. Well, prod it in between helping his peers untangle any number of other mysterious magical items that had turned up during post-war raids of Voldemort's safe houses.

Oh, the difference ten years made.

Ten years ago, he'd been coming off his recently failed relationship with Cho Chang and wondering why girls had to be so contrary and downright confusing. These days, he… still couldn't make heads or tails of how the female mind worked. That probably had something to do with why he'd been married - and divorced - twice in a decade. The first time had been to Ginny Weasley, and it had been an unmitigated disaster. While superficially similar enough, they turned out to have very different ideas of where a relationship should go - namely, the fact that he was hoping to settle down and raise a child or three while she had no intention of bearing children any time soon - as well as differing opinions on a number of small things that added up after awhile. Taking Ron and Hermione's advice about how 'opposites attract', on the other hand, had led to his marriage to Daphne Greengrass. The less said about those three years of his life, the better.

He'd lost a sizable portion of his wealth in that particular split, but it didn't really bother Harry. It was all blood money as far as he was concerned, dumped in his lap after good men and women died to protect him from himself and Dumbledore's machinations. He still had enough to live on if he chose to leave the Ministry, he still had Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and he still had his health and magic. That was good enough for him.

And while Harry still didn't understand how the female mind worked? That didn't really seem to matter when it came to his current relationship, because he was pretty sure that nobody knew how his newest fiancée's mind worked. Including her father, who was strangely amenable to the idea of his daughter dating the man who had gotten the family home blown up during the war. The fact that they - and Hermione - worked together in the Department of Mysteries meant that Harry didn't have to hide anything from her, and his long hours at work were spent with her. Between that and the bloody spectacular sex, Harry had high hopes that the third time would be the charm.

Now if only they could figure out what the damnable Veil of Death was actually meant for…

* * *

><p>When Harry finally entered the Death Chamber, exactly thirty seconds before his shift was due to start - just as he had every day for the last six years - Hermione was already seated beside the Veil, waving her wand at the stone arch while simultaneously dictating to a charmed quill that scribbled away on a nearby notepad. Harry allowed himself a moment to marvel at her multitasking capabilities before descending to the center of the pit, making sure to circle around and come at her from where she could see him out of the corner of her eye rather than risk spooking her. "So, two questions. One: what's so fascinating this morning? And two: is that the same shirt you were wearing yesterday?"<p>

"Yes, fine, you caught me. I've been here all night. But it's for a good reason." Looking up from her work, Hermione met Harry's gaze with sparkling - albeit bloodshot - eyes. "I think I've finally cracked the secret of the veil. Or at least cracked the secret of the secret of the veil." Considering that if she was right, Hermione would have accomplished in a matter of years what entire teams couldn't do over the course of their natural lives? She definitely had Harry's attention. "Just out of curiosity, I used a bog standard miner's charm on the arch. I thought maybe we'd find out there was something inside it; that it was a giant wand or something along those lines. But while I was wrong, it brought my attention back to something that we've ignored because we were told they're useless."

Harry leaned in as Hermione turned back to the arch, tapping the tip of her wand against a series of lines that had been carefully carved into the stone. "Runes. Elder Futhark at that. And it's not that they're useless, at least according to Croaker, but there's no use in trying to translate them because the stone is so weathered that you can't get a clean reading of the runes to work from."

Nodding rapidly, Hermione let out an uncharacteristic giggle - which let Harry know exactly how sleep deprived his friend was - before hopping up out of her chair and grabbing Harry by the wrist. She dragged him across the front of the arch, tapping her wand against another set of runes, and then circled around to the back of that side of the arch and did it a third time. "None of the runes are pristine, so no one set is usable for translation. But… but! They're all the same. So it's just a matter of writing down all the runes and overlapping them to create one complete copy. Or rather, it was. I've already moved on to the translation stage. Which is slow going, since long dead North Germanic dialects are hardly my area of expertise."

"Hermione? Admitting that something isn't her area of expertise?" Harry looked back over his shoulder and smiled as he watched his fiancée descend the steps that lined the perimeter of the Death Chamber. Luna Lovegood offered him a wink even as Hermione let out a huff of exasperation, the blonde gently scratching her nails down the back of the crumple-horned snorkack she had cradled against her chest. "I do believe this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. Somewhere between Ronald managing to chew with his mouth closed and Molly Weasley not sound condescending when she talks to you."

Rolling her eyes, Hermione released her grip on Harry and made her way back over to where her notepad and quill were waiting… and then muttered something distinctly uncomplimentary under her breath as she scratched out several lines. "I do not need that going into the official archives, thank you very much. And while I may not know everything, I did manage to help you find that snorkack." Luna opened her mouth to argue, only to be cut off by Hermione. "Ah ah ah. You wouldn't have found it without me and you know it. So shush."

Luna pouted as she snuggled up against Harry's side, raising the snorkack into the air so she could look it in all four eyes. "Don't you listen to her, Wednesday. I managed to breed you all by myself… from the two snorkacks she helped me find. But still! You're all mine! Aren't you? Aren't you?" The snorkack regarded her impassively for a few seconds, nose twitching, and then turned so it could sink its teeth into her right thumb. "Ouch! Why you little-"

Doing his best not to laugh because he had absolutely no desire to end up banished to his own couch for a night or three, Harry turned his attention back to Hermione and her frenetic scribbling. "So I'm guessing 'how does it work?' won't be answered for a while, but do we at least know 'what is it?'. The Ministry has used it to execute people in the past, but I can't belief that was its original purpose. There are so many ways to kill someone that are easier and faster. Why waste the time and energy it took to construct this?"

"Because if it wasn't damaged - or if they'd had Unbreakable Charms back when this was made - it wouldn't kill people. It would teleport them. Through all four dimensions." Waving her wand, Hermione summoned a lump of clay from a nearby cart and pressed it into place against a damaged portion of the arch before transfiguring it to match the stone. With that accomplished, she began carving a set of runes into the unblemished stone, eyes darting back and forth between her notes and her work. "Like I said, I still don't have a decent translation for the writings but I definitely recognize 'space' and 'time' and 'move'. It's a bloody Viking TARDIS is what it is."

Harry glanced over at Luna and mouthed 'muggle thing' before eyeing the arch again. "So then it's bigger on the inside?" Hermione turned away from what she was doing and shot him a mystified look, making Harry sigh. "I have seen _Doctor Who_, you know. I know exactly what you're talking about. And so what I want to know is… is there a chance that there's some kind of storage pocket on the other side? Like multi-compartment trunks or your purse. If you undo whatever damage has been done, is Sirius going to be in there? Are there going to be a bunch of really confused Vikings in there? Or is it more like the stargate?"

"How do you know about the stargate?"

"The same way as you: we've got Sky over at Grimmauld Place now, and Luna and I like to watch some of the sci-fi programming on Sky 1. _Stargate SG-1_ is a particular favorite of Luna's; I'm a bit more fond of _Atlantis_ myself. Can we focus on the question, though?"

Hermione shook her head before turning back to consult her notes. "I honestly don't know. I haven't seen anything about storage. So I think it might be closer to the stargate. They program in a destination… somehow… and then send people through. It could explain their historical dominance; how do you beat a people who can send reinforcements to five seconds before the battle started?"

Well wasn't that just neat? And if she fixed it, it meant that Harry could send either himself or trusted others to save… nobody. Because the smallest action could cause unforeseen repercussions, and what would happen to the timeline if something they did via the arch got Hermione killed before she could repair it and send people back? Better to not muck with such things, Harry realized. Which was why Time Turners had so many restrictions on them. And… a loud burping noise pulled Harry from his thoughts, and he took a step back as all the runes on the arch flared to life simultaneously. A second later, the tattered black curtain in the middle of the arch started to flutter a bit faster in an invisible breeze. "Hermione? What did you do?"

"I don't know, all I did was…" Trailing off, Hermione's expression became one of horror. "We have no way of controlling it. I fixed the runes, so the arch is turning on because the 'pause' button is probably located right next to how you set a destination on some other artifact that we don't have. Oh dear. What do we do?"

Harry let out a sigh as he drew the Elder Wand and waved it in front of himself, creating a barrier that nullified the slight suction that was already tugging at his clothes. "Get out of here, Hermione. We're going to need you to figure this whole thing out, and you can't if you get pulled through with us." Hermione's eyes lit up in indignation, but Harry slashed his free hand through the air to cut her off. "No! I can hold a barrier longer than anyone else here and you know it. And if I go through… well, I don't think you'll want to be here if Luna's here and I'm gone. So we'll stay and do what we can. Go tell Croaker. See if there are more pieces to this somewhere. See if there are old records. Pull a Hermione. Make the impossible possible. That's your job. Just like this is ours."

After staring at him for a few seconds, Hermione nodded and dashed forward, pulling him into a tight hug. "I will. I'll fix this, Harry, I swear. Good luck." Never the closest to the blonde, Hermione settled for giving Luna a solemn nod before turning and hurrying her way across the pit and then up the steps to safety.

As soon as she was gone, Harry turned and fired off a series of locking charms at the door before adding a few reinforcing charms to make sure she didn't simply blow it off the hinges to get back in. After all, while Hermione was a very smart young woman, she was also about to lose a good friend. The last thing he needed was her breaking down and doing something incredibly noble and stupid. That was his job, thank you very much. Once he was sure that he and Luna wouldn't be interrupted, Harry finally slashed his wand and canceled the shield that was holding the growing effects of the now-active arch at bay. "I still can't believe that the only person I know with any real talent for divination cheated his way through four years of the class."

Luna offered a grin and a shrug as she pulled out baby carrier, passing Wednesday off to Harry long enough to slide into the straps before taking the snorkack back and securing it into place against her chest. "Maybe Ronald could See that Professor Trelawney would accept his work and so that's why he did it? And you can't deny that it's right handy. If it wasn't for him, we would have been caught completely off-guard by this."

"I wasn't complaining. Just think it's funny." Harry patted at his pockets, checking to make sure everything was there. Shrunken trunk full of clothes and personal belongings, check. Shrunken trunk full of potions, ingredients, old wands, books, and assorted magical knickknacks, check. Two shrunken trunks full of money, check. One snorkack, secured for transit. Time to get the show on the road. "Do you think he's right about where we're going to end up? On a whole other planet, some time in the future?"

Striding forward confidently, Luna shot a very familiar and very wicked little grin back over her shoulder at Harry. "If we do, I hope there are green-skinned space babes. Or blue ones. I do so like the color blue." Stopping a few inches away from the rapidly fluttering curtain, the blonde spun in place, blew Harry a kiss, and then fell backward through the Veil.

Harry tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling. "Merlin save me from adorable hypersexual blondes." Taking a deep breath, he dashed forward and plowed through the Veil, boldly going where no man had - voluntarily - gone before.


	2. Chapter 2

Joe's Note: As you probably noticed, I've made a whole host of characterization changes. To each their own and all that, but I don't really see the point of mass character assassination especially when they're not going to feature in the plot. And I couldn't even justify Ron because by switching Harry's love interest, he became irrelevant to the first chapter. I also redid Ginny's backstory a bit, because while I can respect a desire to follow Rowling's canon for as long as possible before deviating? I think there are more reasonable ways to split up Harry and Ginny so you can pair Harry with someone new than 'Ginny's a whore'.  
><span>Dedications &amp; Thanks:<span> To Nicholas, Jess, Jessica, and Christopher for sponsoring me on Patreon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.

* * *

><p>If there were any 'green-skinned space babes', Harry decided as he sat up with a groan, he hoped that they were nowhere near where he and Luna had ended up. Because it was wretched, and that was coming from a person who had spent years cleaning up after the Dursleys. When an air-freshening charm failed to make a dent in the aroma that had him on the edge of vomiting, Harry switched to a Bubble-Head Charm before slowly climbing to his feet. "Luna?"<p>

"Bubble-Head Charm, if you don't mind?" It took him a moment to spot Luna through the disgusting, greenish smog that was in all likelihood the source of the foul odor, but then Harry fired off the requested spell in her direction. "Oh, that's much better. Thank Merlin you still have your wand." Rising from the ground, Luna did her best to brush her off before revealing why she wasn't trying to clean herself up with magic… or capable of casting her own protection against the disgusting smell. Her wand - her original wand, which she'd spent days searching through Malfoy Manor for after the end of the war - had been snapped in half during their transit from London to wherever they were. "Please cast the charm on Wednesday, too; I don't want her breathing this mess. We'll save repairing my wand for later. Wherever we are, I doubt it's magical and so running around with our wands out casting spells is probably a terrible idea."

Harry nodded and added some breathing protection to Luna's furred and feathered little friend before looking down at himself. "Can I at least use magic to clean us up since there's nobody else here to see it?"

"…that would be ever so lovely, yes."

Even with the Bubble-Head Charm keeping the stench at bay, Harry was not at all sad to see the disgusting mess of mixed solids and liquids disappear as he vanished the mess from his clothes. Turning to Luna, he repeated the process before cleaning up Wednesday as best he could. It was only then that he realized that they had an audience… an inhuman audience at that. Which shouldn't have been a surprise, now that Harry thought about it, given Ron had predicted they'd end up on another world as a part of their jump into the future.

But while Harry was familiar with a wide variety of magical beings and beasts, the pack of beings slowly approaching them were unlike anything he had ever seen. It was like someone had crossbred a goblin with a dragon, mated their child with a piranha, enlarged the resulting offspring to human size, and then skinned it alive before sticking on some extra pieces just to make it look even meaner. At the same time, Harry knew from personal experience that not everything that looked intimidating actually was - Hagrid, for instance - and so he forcibly suppressed his instinct to lash out to protect himself and Luna. "Hello?"

Whether or not they could understand him, what emerged from the mouth of the leader of the pack was completely incomprehensible to Harry. Looking to Luna for help merely earned him a shake of her head; despite her greater experience with languages, she was just as helpless here as he was. When one of them drew what looked far too much like a gun for his comfort, though, Harry upgraded the situation from 'potentially dangerous' to 'quite likely life-threatening'. Sliding into cover behind him, Luna brought one hand up to rest between his shoulders as she leaned forward. "I've changed my mind about you running around casting spells, if that's okay with you."

"Yeah." Harry brought the Elder Wand up as he slipped into a combat stance, watching warily as the rest of newcomers drew guns of their own. "I'm pretty sure I'm okay with that."

* * *

><p>While Captain Preitor Gavorn was a turian who was largely content with his lot in life, there was one thing he would have changed if he could: the regular anti-vorcha patrols he was forced to undertake. While he understood why his boss wanted them deterred before they could even reach his usual post at the front of her club, it didn't make dealing with them on their home turf any safer or easier. For a short time, he'd managed to hire a dedicated vorcha removal team to keep the neighborhood around the club clear, but eventually the funding had been pulled. It was his own fault for offering to cover medical care for those hurt on duty, he'd been told. And so now he was stuck doing the job with his subordinates, instead of dumping it off on disposable mercenaries.<p>

Slowly making his way down one of the back streets that allowed privileged individuals to come and go from Afterlife's VIP section unnoticed, Gavorn was pulled from his thoughts as a handful of vorcha went tumbling through the air in front of him, forcing him to lean backward to avoid getting raked across the face by one's claws. They hit the wall across from the alley they'd come flying out of with a series of dull thuds, slowly sliding their way down to drop to the ground in a pile. As the vorcha at the top of the pile began climbing to its feet, Gavorn reached back over his shoulder and drew his Phaeston, the assault rifle whirring softly as it expanded in his hands. Before he could so much as bark a warning, though, much less take a shot, a bright red bolt of energy slammed into the pile.

The vorcha exploded.

The barrel of Gavorn's rifle dipped as he stared at the bloody smear that had formerly been a half dozen vorcha in disbelief. That… had been no weapon he was familiar with, and he was familiar with a great many thanks to his years working security on Omega. Neither a grenade nor a missile, and while most mass accelerator weapons could be modified with explosive rounds, that didn't explain the size of the explosion… or the red glow. His sense of disbelief only grew when the culprit emerged from the alley: a young human male who appeared to be armed with nothing more than a stick that was glowing at the tip. Trailing behind him was a slender blonde woman who appeared to be unarmed… but who was transporting some sort of bizarre animal in one of the child carriers that Gavorn had sometimes seen human females use with their young.

Well, Gavorn thought with a sigh, at least it wasn't the Collectors again. Humans were something he knew how to deal with. Raising his free hand, he issued a series of commands to his subordinates via hand signals before bringing his assault rifle back up to point at the human. "Stop right there! What did you do to those vorcha?"

* * *

><p>Well, he was still facing unfamiliar beings armed with futuristic guns but at least these ones seemed more civilized than the last batch. Granted they only seemed defensive rather than aggressive because he was projecting his own human mannerisms onto them, Harry mused, but at least they weren't lunging and trying to bite him. So even if they were aggressive, they were at least a civilized aggressive. That being said? Until he figured out exactly what he was dealing with, he was keeping Luna safely behind him. While she was far from helpless most of the time - and had even saved his arse a few times with her far wider repertoire of spells - all the knowledge in the world couldn't save her as long as her wand was broken.<p>

Running his eyes over the group, Harry noticed something interesting. Despite consisting of at least three species, their armor all matched and their weapons looked similar too. Hmm. He had just killed a bunch of… somethings. Perhaps this was local law enforcement, responding to the situation? If so - and assuming they weren't terribly corrupt - they might even be able to help him and Luna figure out where - and when - they were. There was just one problem. "What did you say? I can't understand you." The armored, avian-like being that seemed to be the leader of the new arrivals spoke again, but its language was just as alien the second time around. "I… don't… understand… you." Getting desperate, Harry tried a gentle wandless legilimency probe toward the being, but found himself running into the same barrier as with verbal communication: a complete lack of comprehension. Its mind was completely foreign to Harry on a level he hadn't experienced even with magical beings from Earth, preventing him from making heads or tails of what he was finding. The word 'aria' seemed to feature regularly and prominently, but what did opera have to do with anything?

After a few more fruitless exchanges between them, the avian being gave up and reached around to attach its weapon to the back of its armor. With its companions covering it, it pressed something that caused a glowing orange construct to materialize around his left forearm. Another poke materialized a keyboard, and then it began typing away at the keys. A decidedly artificial voice emerged that, while no more understandable, was at least recognizable. "Chto vy delayete chtoby te vorka?" Russian, or a similar Slavic language. They were getting closer to something Harry could understand. Then came a phrase in some variety of Chinese - quite possibly a Wu dialect, since it reminded Harry of listening to Su cuss when things went wrong at work - and then finally… "What did you do to those vorcha?"

At least now Harry had a name to go with his attackers. And he was starting to lean more and more toward this group being law enforcement; while the voice was obviously emotionless, the question was a simple interrogative rather than an accusation. Hopefully that meant he wasn't on the verge of having to fight for their lives… again. "Self-defense. I tried to drive them off but they wouldn't stop trying to attack my fiancée and I. I thought maybe giving them a bit of a harder push would put some fear into them, but when they started getting back up…"

"Vorcha are too stupid to feel fear. Or learn things. Putting them down for good is the only way to deal with them." The being's words elicited noises from its companions that were - while not laughter by human standards - unmistakably noises of good humor. One look quelled them, and the leader of the group returned to typing on his glowing arm… computer… thing. "I don't care why you did it. Killing them means six less vorcha I need to take care of. I asked how you did it. I've never seen a weapon like that before."

Evidently Luna had been right in her assumption that areas should be considered non-magical until proven otherwise. So much for his hopes that here in the future, the wizarding world had integrated into society as a whole and magic was now known to the general public. Harry thought for a moment before deciding on a way to simultaneously deflect the question while finding out more about where they were. "To be fair? I've never seen someone who looks like you before." Someone rather than something, because if there was one thing Harry had learned over the years, it was never to refer to something smart enough to converse with you as a 'thing'.

Except for portraits and mirrors, but that was a whole other kettle of fish.

The question seemed to catch the being off-guard. It stood there staring at Harry for almost a minute, mandibles twitching, and then began typing furiously on his computer. "You've never met a turian before? Or at least seen one of us? Even if you're from some isolated human colony, you would have run into us the moment you set foot on Omega."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Inwardly, Harry was cursing up a storm. While on one hand, he now had a name for one of the three races he was facing… he had evidently just exposed exactly how unusual he and Luna were. Bugger. Maybe he would have been better off admitting to being a wizard? No helping it now, though. Best to keep moving. "Well then, I'm sure just calling you 'turian' would be awfully rude. My name is Harry Potter. My companion's name is Luna Lovegood. And you are..?"

"Captain Gavorn. One of my jobs is to patrol this area and keep the vorcha pushed out of where the civilized beings lived. Or what passes for civilized beings here on Omega." That elicited another round of laughter from Gavorn's associates, making him look back at them and bark out something in his native tongue. Their fun brought to an end, the group drew their own weapons and began spreading out through the area. "Now… I don't know who you are, what you're hiding, how you got here, or why you don't have any kind of translator on you. But since dealing with you is above my pay grade, I'm not even going to try and find out. We're going to see Aria."

And this was why they weren't supposed to read the minds of people who thought in foreign tongues, Harry mused, much less the minds of other species. He'd assumed that Gavorn was a music buff. He'd assumed wrong. "And if we don't want to go see 'Aria'?"

Rather unexpectedly, the question just seemed to amuse Gavorn. "You're somehow ignorant of basic facts of life, don't have a translator, probably don't have any money… do you have somewhere better to be?" Point. "Now let's go. Sooner I drop you off, the sooner I can get back to work, and the sooner I can go home to my mate."

With that, conversation came to an abrupt halt as Gavorn turned and walked away. Harry exchanged a look with Luna before giving chase, the blonde easily matching his pace as they followed their guide through the streets of 'Omega'. Whatever - or wherever - that was. "No green-skinned space babes so far, but we do have armored space chickens, lizard people, and T-rex turtles. Oh, and the vorcha. That's got to count for something, yeah?"

"I suppose. I can't wait to get a translator of my own, though; I wonder if the turtle people are as brutish as they look, or if there's more to them than meets the eye. Oh! And there's at least two species of lizard people; I spotted a different kind moving behind Captain Gavorn while you two were talking. None of them really strike my fancy, though, so…" Luna trailed off as her head slowly turned to the right, following the progress of a scantily-clad woman with blue skin and tentacles where her hair should have been. "Well now. That's more like it."

Chuckling, Harry wrapped one arm around Luna's waist and used it to keep her moving both forward and on course as she continued following the blue woman with her eyes. "All in due time, dear. There will be plenty of time for blue-skinned space babes after we deal with this 'Aria' person. Aria. Hmm. Aria. Something about that just screams 'Mediterranean' to me. Do you think this place is run by humans, then?"

Finally giving up on her optical molestation of her first ever space babe, Luna turned her attention forward and then let out a low whistle as Gavorn led them through a pair of sliding metal doors and into a giant club. A giant, three-storied club that was positively teeming with a mixture of human and blue alien women, all of whom were wearing very little while dancing provocatively for the patrons' enjoyment. "If it is, they have amazing taste."

Despite preferring to be a bit more discreet than Luna when it came to his appreciation of the fairer sex, even Harry couldn't keep his attention from wandering as Gavorn led them around the lowest tier of the club. Coming to a halt at the base of a staircase, he signaled for them to stay behind as he ascended a set of steps before turning a corner and disappearing from view. "Just out of curiosity, since you passed through the arch first… did you have any control over our destination?" Luna turned to look at him, arching one fine blonde brow. "What? We just so happen to land near a strip club? That's a little suspicious."

"Is it, now?" Smirking, Luna leaned in and nibbled at his neck gently before trailing her lips up to his earlobe. "If I'd been in control, don't you think we would have landed in the dressing room or some such? Perhaps a brothel full of lovely alien ladies?"

Point.


	3. Chapter 3

Joe's Note: This chapter will touch on the bit of temporal realignment I've done in my version of the story. Even in stories where I've adjusted the timeline of one or both fandoms, I try my best to have a definitive sequence of events to work from. Not only does it come in handy for basics of writing - you can't really refer to someone as 'the older brunette' if you don't know how old everyone is at any given time - but it keeps your characters from accidentally referring to stuff that hasn't happened yet.  
><span>Dedications &amp; Thanks:<span> To Nicholas, Jess, Christopher, and Tracy for sponsoring me on Patreon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing. Additional thanks go to the incomparable LogicalPremise for his amazing set of references covering many untouched facets of the _Mass Effect_ universe, as well as listening to me ramble about ideas for the future of this story.

* * *

><p>By the time Gavorn finally returned, Harry was on the verge of giving in to Luna's cajoling and wandering off to explore the club's entertainment. It wasn't like they had anything better to do; he'd already surreptitiously repaired her wand, transferred Wednesday to a carrier on his own back in case Luna did anything impulsive, raised the alien species count to eight - there were also elephantine beings and a four-eyed humanoid species - and they'd teamed up to cast every linguistics-related charm they knew between the two of them on passing aliens. That effort met with complete failure, although Harry was reasonably certain that one of the teal-skinned space babes working at the bar could speak English. Hence Luna's desire to go wandering. Well, she wanted to go wandering anyway, but the English speaker made for a good enough excuse.<p>

Without a word, Gavorn reached out and wrapped his talons around Harry's left forearm, pulling it forward so he could force an orange bracelet onto Harry's wrist. As soon as he was released, Harry yanked his arm back to his chest, examining his new accessory warily even as he watched Gavorn repeat the process on Luna with half an eye. "Aria refuses to type what she wants to say to you." Oh hey, they could understand him now! Wicked! "Someone will explain more about how they work after the meeting. For now, the fact that they do would should be good enough."

Harry nodded before turning to Luna as a random thought passed through his head. "I wonder if we all sound the same to turians or if our… turianese… has a British accent too?"

"Su said my Shanghainese had a distinct Devon accent. Never figured out whether she was taking the piss out of me or if she was serious. World's best Snap face, that girl." Luna brought her left hand up behind Harry's back as they followed Gavorn up the stairs, presumably petting Wednesday based on the low vibration that soon emerged from the snorkack. Eventually they found themselves on an elevated platform that looked out over the rest of the club. A curved couch followed the edge of the platform, and sitting dead center in the middle of the couch was a purple-skinned space babe. Aria, presumably. "Hmm. Same question, roles reversed. Wonder what she's going to sound like to us. Do you think she'll be Irish? I do so love Irish girls…"

One of the darker purple lines running along Aria's brows twitched upward at Luna's words, but the purple-skinned woman remained otherwise impassive. After allowing Luna to natter on about Irish girls for almost a minute, she cleared her throat loudly, interrupting the blonde. "I'd heard that some humans can be uncivilized, but this is getting ridiculous. Gavorn, introduce these two so we're not here all day."

"Hmm. Canadian. It could be worse. At least she's not a Yank."

Stepping forward, Harry cut off both Gavorn's response and any further commentary from Luna. "Actually, we were expecting you to introduce yourself first. You are the hostess here, so to speak. But that's how things are done back home. Since they're clearly different here… if it will get things moving? My name is Harry Potter. This is my fiancée, Luna Lovegood. And you would be..?"

Aria's mouth opened and closed several times, and then her gaze flicked sideways to Gavorn. "Is he serious?"

"No, he's Harry. Sirius was his godfather." Luna let out a peal of laughter at the expression her joke received from Aria before making her way over to the couch and seating herself beside the woman. "Harry hates that joke too. He's more of the dry, sarcastic wit type. I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to my humor." Leaning in, Luna winked at Aria. "Flexible other ways, too."

As Aria likewise leaned in toward Luna, Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a radish earring, slipping the hook through the hole in his right earlobe. While it looked thoroughly ridiculous, he'd take the ribbing if it meant he could hold a conversation with Luna over a distance without shouting. Or in this case, listen in on her conversation. "You, little girl, are dangerously close to breaking the one rule of Omega: don't fuck with Aria."

Displaying the trademark fearlessness that both drew Harry to Luna and made him thoroughly convinced that he'd end up a widower someday, the blonde giggled and planted a kiss on Aria's dark purple lips before disappearing with a pop, reappearing on the other side of the woman even as Aria brought her right hand up and released a rippling burst of blue energy. Passing through the space that Luna had just occupied, it slammed into the couch and… Harry grimaced, watching the surface warp and ripple before crumbling. Whether magic or something else entirely, he had no idea, but he was reasonably sure that getting hit by one of those blasts would ruin a victim's day. Luna, unsurprisingly, was utterly nonplussed by the near miss, wrapping her arms around Aria's shoulders from behind. "If that's the only rule here, it would explain your mood. Everyone needs to have a little fun once in a while."

"Luna, sweetie, please don't antagonize the woman in charge. And weren't you the one who said we should keep certain things to ourselves?" Harry rolled his eyes as Luna huffed and pulled away, apparating back to his side. Doing his best not to laugh as Aria looked back and forth wildly, obviously trying to figure out what had just happened, Harry tried to steer the conversation back on track. "At least I'm assuming you're in charge of Omega. Or are you a lieutenant of someone who can't be bothered to deal with us right now?"

Presumably realizing how ridiculous she looked, Aria took a deep breath before forcing her face to smooth back to impassiveness. Leaning back against the couch once more, she spread her arms wide along its back. "I'm not 'in charge' of Omega, boy. I am Omega. So I know that neither of you were born here, nor did you arrive on the station through any of the docking bays. If you were smuggled aboard, you wouldn't be stupid enough to do something that gets my attention. Which leaves me wondering… who are Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood? And how did they get here?"

Was there any point in lying about who they were and how they'd gotten there, Harry wondered, now that Luna had blown their secret wide open? At least to Aria? "We're wizards. Or rather, I'm a wizard and Luna's a witch. We're a… I guess you'd call us a subspecies of humans. Or at least I think we are; nobody's ever really looked into the science of what makes us magical. We're born with powers that most others lack, and separate ourselves away into hidden communities to keep from being persecuted by the rest of the world. Although that might not be true anymore; our information is a little out of date because we're from 2006. We worked for a government department that dealt in the strange and unusual. One of our coworkers accidentally activated some sort of gateway, and it threw us through time and space to… well, here. And now."

"…that's ludicrous."

"And yet here we are."

"Yes you are. Clear on the other side of the galactic core from Earth, and a hundred and seventy-five years in your future. I'd assume you were lying or insane - or possibly both - and have you shot where you stand for wasting my time…" Trailing off, Aria shrugged out of her white bolero jacket before blurring forward in a streak of blue light, reappearing in the middle of the platform on her feet as a wave of energy sent Harry, Luna, and Gavorn stumbling back. "That was the kanquess. What your girlfriend pulled wasn't. Which means there's definitely something different about you, and I want to know what. So I'm going to give you two options: one of you melds with me so I can see your memories and decide if you're telling the truth or not… or we go back to that 'shoot you where you stand' option. Choose quickly."

While 'volunteer or die' wasn't much of a choice, it didn't make Harry any less curious about the unfamiliar option being offered to them. Straightening up, he exchanged a look with Luna before returning his attention to Aria. "Not that we have much of a choice, but… what's 'melding'?"

Aria sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Right. I forgot that you two wouldn't know anything about aliens. Or at least you wouldn't if you're telling the truth. Long story short? An asari can temporarily join her nervous system to another's. As you can probably guess, it makes sex a lot more interesting and it's also how asari reproduce. But in the hands of an asari who knows what she's doing? It can be used to save someone who's critically injured, share knowledge, or in this case? I'll be able to determine if you're telling the truth because I'll be able to look through your memories."

Out of all the things Harry had been expecting to hear, he could honestly say that was not one of them. "So you want to read mine or Luna's mind… by mating with one of us?"

"I volunteer!" Luna thrust her right arm up in the air, waving it back and forth enthusiastically. "I volunteer as tribute!"

That actually worked out rather well, Harry realized, once he squashed his protective instincts. And got done cringing at the reference to that truly deplorable book series Luna loved so much. If Aria was telling the truth and melding operated on a base, neurological level? His occlumency would keep her at bay about as well as it kept him from getting infected by dragon pox. Luna, on the other hand, had a very… unique way of thinking… that actually stood a chance of slowing Aria down. The asari seemed to realize that as well, or perhaps she was still unnerved by Luna's earlier treatment of her. Whatever the reason, Aria eyed Luna warily as the blonde stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Aria shook her head for a moment before bringing her hands up on either side of Luna's head, pressing her fingers against the blonde's pale skin. "Strictly business, girl. Don't you dare try anything funny when we… embrace eternity!"

Harry shook his head and turned to Gavorn, raising his left hand and extending all five fingers. As the turian stared at him uncomprehendingly, Harry slowly counted down to zero and then nodded in Aria and Luna's direction. Sure enough, the blonde had reached around to grab the asari's arse with both hands, pulling Aria forward into a kiss. Luna's left hand slowly slid outward to rest on the asari's hip before migrating upward toward Aria's breast, but her quest came to an abrupt end as Aria yanked herself backward. Undeterred, Luna crossed her arms behind her back and bounced on her toes. "Ooh, that was fun! Can you interrogate me some more? You only stayed in my mind long enough to see if we were telling the truth. If you dig deeper, you can find all sorts of interesting things, like-"

"For some reason, Potter, I want to threaten to fuck start her head if you don't shut her up and I don't even know what that means. Athame's tits, that girl's got to be the most irritating thing I've ever met and I used to fuck a hanar." Groaning, Aria wandered back over to the couch before throwing herself down on it, rubbing her temples as her eyes slowly faded from black to their normal blue. "Gavorn, put them in one of the apartments next to Her's. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I saw enough to know that they're telling the truth. And then some, evidently. Goddess, I'm going to be purging like a dancer after Janiris tonight…"

Gavorn nodded and turned away, making his way down the stairs without waiting to see if they were following. Lunging forward, Harry wrapped his fingers around Luna's wrist and then apparated them down to the base of the first staircase, allowing them to easily catch up with the turian. "So, how was it?"

Giggling, Luna intertwined her fingers with Harry and leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked. "You could bounce a galleon off that arse."

While not quite what he'd been after, the answer almost had Harry wishing that he'd volunteered to have his mind invaded.

Almost.

* * *

><p>Leaning back against the bar, a woman in a dark blue robe tracked the trio with her yellow eyes as Gavorn led the two newcomers out of Afterlife. While her network was nowhere near as expansive as Aria's or the Shadow Broker's, she knew that the male was responsible for the death of a half-dozen vorcha… possibly using a personal-sized directed energy weapon. That alone would have made them worthy of investigation, and then she'd seen the female's eyes turn white and glow while she melded with Aria.<p>

Fascinating.

Her fellow Sylléktries would want to know more, though, and there was no data like firsthand observation. Dropping a few credits next to her empty glass, she rose to her feet and melted into the crowd. As she closed in on the trio, she reached down to tap at her omni-tool and faded out of sight.

* * *

><p>Their new apartment definitely put anywhere he'd lived to shame in terms of comforts, Harry thought as he looked around the expansive space. Not quite as big as Grimmauld Place in terms of pure square meterage, but the amenities easily made up for that. The three large windows that looked out over a combination of space and glowing cityscape, for instance, and the kitchen full of recognizable enough appliances that Harry was reasonably certain he'd be able to cook for them without blowing the station up. And- "Your omni-tools contain basic information about the galaxy, a communicator, and dozens of other things. I've seen humans a third your age figure out how to use them. If you haven't figured out how to contact me by the time my shift starts tomorrow, I'll send someone down to make sure you're not dead."<p>

The corner of Harry's mouth quirked upward at that even as he slung the baby carrier off his back and released Wednesday from her confinement, watching as the snorkack took a few experimental hops before spreading her wings and flying over to the nearest window. "How charitable of you."

"What do you want from me? I'm not paid to deal with this kind of stuff. I'm paid to kill vorcha, and I was supposed to be done with that and home with my mate a while ago." Shaking his head, Gavorn turned and stalked toward the door of the apartment. "If I've missed another dinner with Vincent, I'm going to come back down here and bury my talons in your-"

The door slid shut, cutting off the rest of Gavorn's muttered threat, and Harry turned his attention to where Luna was waving her wand back and forth over the palatial bed that occupied a goodly amount of the raised portion of the split-level apartment. Already it had been transformed from something sleek, modern, and primarily metal to a four-poster bed resembling the one that occupied the master bedroom of Grimmauld Place. Ascending the four stairs separating the two levels, he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind. "Having fun?"

"Not as much fun as I'm about to have." Luna waved her wand back and forth, adding some Ravenclaw blue hangings to their bed before conjuring pillow after pillow along the head of the bed. Once she was satisfied with the state of their new bedroom, Luna turned her attention to Harry, looking him up and down slowly. "Right then. Pants off. This apartment isn't going to christen itself, you know."

Harry chuckled as he pulled away, emptying his pockets and enlarging each trunk before placing it against the nearby wall. He made sure to unlock and open the one containing their supply of potions; he wanted to have easy access to their stash of bruise balm and murtlap essence come morning. "Someone's feeling randy."

There was a soft growl and then Harry found himself flying through the air, landing in the center of the bed with a bounce. Luna stalked toward him, vanishing her clothes and then his before dropping her wand to the floor with a clatter. "No, someone was randy this morning when you got to work. You knew this was going to happen today; you should have gotten to work early so we could give your office a proper send-off before going to see Hermione. And that was before Aria and Afterlife." Even as Harry tried to push himself up on his elbows, Luna moved to straddle his waist and forced him back down onto the bed. "Less witty banter, more shagging."

"As you wish."

* * *

><p>Thoroughly distracted by their fun, neither of them noticed the slight shimmering near the top of the stairs, or the wide yellow eyes that appeared for a moment before fading back out of existence.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4

Joe's Note: Since I made it more than clear that Kasumi wouldn't be involved with my version of the story - or at least involved in the same way - due to me cleaning up the timeline, I'm sure you're all wondering who has taken her spot shadowing our protagonists and who her 'Sylléktries' are. Well, since this was where Kasumi insinuated herself into Harry's life in _Lightning among the Stars_, it seems as good a place as any to introduce one Óasi Cytherea Paralía Yaan Calia. And if you looked at that name and thought something other than 'Mary Sue', you're either a hardcore _Mass Effect_ geek like me, have read LogicalPremise's work, or quite likely both.  
><span>Dedications &amp; Thanks:<span> To Nicholas, Jess, Christopher, Tracy, Thomas, and Jessica for sponsoring me on Patreon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing. Additional thanks go to the incomparable LogicalPremise for his amazing set of references covering many untouched facets of the _Mass Effect_ universe, as well as listening to me ramble about ideas for the future of this story.

* * *

><p>"I still don't like the idea of carrying a gun."<p>

"I know you don't, Harry, but if you want to be allowed out of this apartment on your own? Aria's going to make you carry one. Same goes for Luna."

Given the length and breadth of their activities when it came to thoroughly breaking in their new home, neither Harry nor Luna had risen early that morning. Accordingly, their vague deadline with Gavorn had come and gone without them making any breakthroughs with their omni-tools, forcing the turian to send someone to the apartment. Much to Harry's surprise - given that Luna had made no secret of her proclivities - Gavorn had picked a svelte asari with teal skin to serve as their guide to the twenty-second century.

Krína had turned out to be a wonderfully adept teacher for a pair of pupils who weren't even familiar with twenty-first century computers, explaining things in simple and basic terms without coming off as condescending. In short order, she managed to walk them through the device's communication, encyclopedia, and extranet functions, and had shown Luna how to use an omni-tool to capture both still photos and videos. The latter had left Harry shaking his head; he wasn't sure how much storage space an omni-tool had, but he was reasonably certain that Luna would manage to completely fill it with homemade porn in no time at all.

With her task technically complete, Krína had made to leave… and then given in far too easily when Luna offered up her best puppy dog eyes and asked for a tour of the area. Not that Harry blamed her; dealing with him and Luna was probably more fun than whatever Aria usually had her doing. They'd ended up making a circuit of the immediate neighborhood as Krína pointed out where some of Aria's trusted lieutenants lived before moving outward into the nearby commercial district so she could show them what places were safe to eat at. Their final stop had been Omega Market, where Krína had surprised them by picking up a pair of pistols that Aria had purchased for them. Leading to their current discussion. "I still don't understand why. Aria of all people should know that we-"

"She does, Harry. Thing is? She doesn't want everyone else knowing. From what she told me when Gavorn brought me to her for a briefing? The galaxy isn't that different from the Earth you left. If you don't hide your powers, you'll attract attention. The wrong kind of attention. So until you can get somewhere safe enough where you don't have to worry?" Krína took the S-3c Phalanx from Harry and adjusted something, causing a blue beam of light to emerge from just above the barrel. "Point the light at what's after you, and pull the trigger until it stops moving."

Harry sighed and took the pistol back, slowly sweeping it across the room and watching as the laser sight traced a path along the windows' glass. Then his keen eyes noticed something and he doubled back, frowning as the blue light bent slightly to one side and then the other as it passed over a certain area. "Am I the only one seeing this, or-"

While he didn't know what to make of the phenomenon, Krína evidently did. Lunging forward, she pulled her shotgun from where it rested at the small of her back and pointed it toward the anomaly Harry had discovered. "Freeze! I don't know how you got in here, but you'll be leaving here in a few pieces if you don't show yourself now."

"You are aware that those two requests are mutually exclusive, right?" The words came rapidly at a high pitch; while the galaxy's heavy reliance on translators meant that the speaker could have been anyone or anything, it was a sound that Harry associated with a woman who'd had a bit too much sugar or too big a dose of Pepper Up Potion. "If they make a tactical cloak that responds to voice commands, I haven't been outfitted with it. So I can either remain motionless… or deactivate my cloak so you can see me. Which is more important?"

After examining her own Phalanx for a few seconds, Luna figured out how to activate the laser sight and rose from the couch, sweeping inward from the right until she found the edge of the distortion created by their visitor's 'tactical cloak'. "Actually, I don't really care if you stay here all invisible for a while. It's not the first time we've had an unknown voyeur. Makes it a bit hotter, to be honest…"

The air shimmered as the woman brought the fingers of her right hand up to tap against her left forearm. Tendrils of blue energy rippled over the being, outlining her figure, and then she faded into view. Like Krína, their voyeur was an asari, but the two were as different from each other as Luna and Hermione. While Krína was almost uniformly a teal skin tone, the newcomer - so to speak, given that she'd been in their apartment for an unknown amount of time - had skin that was green near her core and radiated outward into blue tones, with diamond-shaped dark blue markings over her brilliant yellow eyes. And unlike Krína - and Aria, and every other asari he'd seen so far - her crests seemed to naturally split themselves into two distinctly horn-like bundles that rose upward into the air rather than possessing the slicked back appearance of a normal asari's crests. They were even dressed completely differently: Krína was wearing a black dress that was remarkably conservative compared to what Harry had seen other asari wearing while they were out touring Omega, while the newcomer was wearing sleek purple and gold armor with an 'O' in the center of the chestplate. "Technically, I'm not a voyeur. I'll admit to watching you two go at it and enjoying it, but I enjoyed it in a 'I wish I could get in on that' way. Not a 'oh goddess yes, I love spying on sex so much' way. I was just doing my duty to my people and then… well, moving on. My name is Óasi Cytherea Paralía Yaan Calia, and I may have a solution to your problems."

Harry eyed the asari suspiciously as he holstered his pistol and drew his wand. If she'd been spying on them for as long as she was implying, he reasoned, she already knew all about their abilities. No point in pretending they were muggles. Besides, his wand could be used for a great many more things than his pistol if she proved reluctant to answer certain questions. "Oh? And what problems do you think you can help us with? For that matter, what out of that entire mess is your actual name?" Pausing, Harry realized that his last question could have been phrased a bit better. "Your given name? What should we call you in conversation?"

"Calia. Or Yaan if you're feeling formal or unfriendly." Slowly making her way across the room, Calia took a seat in the middle of the couch and leaned back. "I'm guessing you haven't met a salarian yet?"

Holstering her own pistol, Luna activated her omni-tool and brought up an image of one of the lizard people that had been accompanying Gavorn when they first met him. "Salarian, yeah? We've seen a few. What do they have to do with your name? You're an asari."

Calia rolled her eyes at that. "Only half. My father was a salarian."

"Ugh, you're one of those types." Krína's words and the accompanying groan made Harry shoot a curious glance at the teal asari, prompting her to elaborate. "Considering you generally can't tell us apart, it's something that I really don't understand. Half-krogan, one-quarter batarian… it doesn't matter who your mother melded with. At the end of the day, you're still an asari. An asari who acts a lot like her aithntar, maybe, but still an asari."

Reaching up, Calia ran her fingers along her crests before interlacing her fingers behind her neck and stretching. "Yes, because I look just like your average asari, don't I? Clearly nothing different here. Especially nothing that would possibly remind you of my salarian ancestry in the least." She had a point there; while Harry had limited exposure to asari as a whole given that he'd only been on Omega for roughly a day at this point, she was quite obviously different from any other asari he'd seen up until this point. "As for your problems, Harry… can I call you Harry?" He nodded. "Right, your problems. You're existing purely on Aria's good graces at this point and you have to hope she doesn't get bored of you. You're broke until you can take that trunk full of precious metals to a human colony and convert them to credits at a respectable rate. You can't get to a human colony because you're broke. You're basically stuck in a vicious cycle: you can't get money without spending money you don't yet have. Unless you put yourself in someone's debt… or find someone willing to help you out."

Harry let out a snort of disbelief at that before drawing his wand, waving it and conjuring an ornate chair for himself. "I see." Slipping his wand back into its holster, he sank down into the chair before patting the armrest with his right hand. As Luna settled in at his side, he wrapped his arm around her waist before fixing Calia with a distinctly unimpressed look. "Let me guess. Despite just hearing you admit that you're spying on us for someone, we're supposed to believe you want to help us out?"

"Well, not me in particular. Not that I don't feel for you, because I do, but I don't have my own ship. Which is evident by the fact that I'm on this rock to begin with; if I could go wherever I wanted, I'd be pretty much anywhere other than Omega or Khar'shan right now." Calia shot a glance out the window at the reddish cityscape of Omega, shuddering faintly before continuing. "I'm just a scout for my people; I identify interesting specimens, observe them, and then report back to Óasi. I'm authorized to negotiate on behalf of the matriarchs if I find someone who just barely qualifies for our attention, but-"

The longer he let Calia speak, the more confused Harry found himself getting, and so he whistled softly to interrupt her so that he could get a word in edgewise. "Not that these extra details aren't fascinating and all, but you're sorta tap-dancing around the erumpent in the room. Who are 'your people'? Who do you represent? Because if you've been with us since we got to this apartment, you know that we know pretty much nothing about the galaxy and I'd really like a name I can bounce off Encyclopedia Krína here."

"The Sylléktries." The utterly alien word made Harry frown and eye his omni-tool suspiciously, but Calia was ready with an explanation. "We routinely hack the government servers that push out translator updates and make sure that word goes untouched. We don't want to be confused with the creepy bug aliens from beyond the Omega 4 relay."

A name that he didn't recognize and another question to add to all of the others that he had about the galaxy, Omega, and now Calia. And her 'people'. Harry groaned, bringing his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Krína? Can you help me make some sense out of all this?"

There was a soft whir as Krína's shotgun collapsed and then she stored it before throwing herself down on the left arm of his chair. "I would love to, but… by the goddess. I thought the Sylléktries were a myth."

"Evidently you were myth-taken." Luna loosed a tinkling, bell-like laugh even as Harry and Krína groaned at the joke, before abruptly growing more serious. "As fun as this is, though? I want answers just as much as Harry does. And since taking what you want seems to be how things work here on Omega?" Thrusting her arm out, Luna released her wand from its holster and then jabbed it at Calia, freezing her in place before casting one of the few spells either of them still had to verbalize. "_Legilimens_."

* * *

><p>Sitting in his office, Jack Harper allowed himself a moment's respite as he stared out at the slowly shifting mass of colors on the surface of Anadius before sighing and pulling up the footage attached to the latest report from one of his agents on Omega. While he sincerely doubted that one more viewing would make the video any more sensical, he also knew that his obsession with solving mysteries would keep him from moving on until he finally understood what he was looking at. So the sooner he got back to work, he reasoned, the sooner he'd finish.<p>

A bright flash of white light. Two humans - and their pet - appearing out of nowhere. A few minutes of motionlessness. The male awakening, followed seconds later by the female. The male drawing some sort of device from up his sleeve, and using it to emit several colored bursts of light with varying effects. The female producing a damaged version of the device for a few seconds before tucking it away again. The arrival of the vorcha. The male assuming a defensive posture in front of the female, and then using more bursts of light to drive the vorcha back. One burst sending them flying out of sight - forcing his agent to have to cobble together footage from a second security camera - and a last burst of red light that caused the vorcha to explode. The humans being approached by one of Aria's lackeys and then led off.

From there, according to reports collected from lower-ranking agents and collated for easy reading, the two humans had met with Aria briefly before being escorted to one of the more heavily defended apartment blocks that was firmly within Aria T'Loak's personal domain. Two separate agents claimed to have seen the woman's eyes turn white and glow while she linked with Aria. A single report could be written off as a trick of the light or an agent indulging in a drink too many with customers in Afterlife. Two warranted investigation. According to an eavesdropper, their names were supposedly Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood. Given that neither appeared in any of the numerous databases that Harper had access to - and Luna Lovegood sounded like something out of a Fleming novel - he'd note them as probable aliases and told his analysts to focus on facial recognition. Today, the pair had emerged briefly from their apartment today under the watchful eye of one of Aria's subordinates, touring the area and acquiring weapons before returning home. And-

An alert blinked off to his right, signifying the arrival of priority traffic from a field agent. From the same field agent as the report he was reading, Harper noted before opening the message. He stared at it for a few seconds before swearing under his breath. While he normally appreciated initiative, the messages that his agent had taken hours to crack could have been done in seconds aboard Cronus Station if only he'd attached them. Now he was stuck playing catchup and if there was one thing Harper hated above all others, it was being forced into a reactionary position.

The Sylléktries were after his mystery humans. Personally, Harper respected the asari sect's goals because - save for their largely isolationist stance - they weren't terribly different from the guiding principles of Cerberus. But that respect came to an abrupt end when there was the possibility of advanced human specimens or unknown, advanced technology falling into the hands of a group of eugenics-obsessed aliens. But competing with them for the favor of Potter and Lovegood would be… difficult, to say the least. Countering whatever offer the Sylléktries made in terms of money or materiel would likely require a sizable financial outlay, and then there was the nature of the Sylléktries themselves…

"Jana, contact Operatives Lawson and Brooks and have them come to my office immediately. And have someone create a new set of papers for Brooks; I refuse to have one of my people walking around using the name 'Tabitha Rasa' of all things…"

* * *

><p>Tapping his fingers together as he stared at the reports filtering in from both Omega and Cronos Station, the Shadow Broker smiled widely. "Oh, Harper, you almost make things too easy for me. If only you were humble enough to work with the salarians or quarians, you might actually stand a chance of keeping me out of your systems."<p>

It was nice to have confirmation that his agents weren't dosing up on red sand while on the job, which had been his initial thought when reports started rolling in about a human male with a 'stick' that shot beams of light and a human whose eyes glowed when she linked with an asari. While the latter was still unsubstantiated, albeit backed by the reports of Cerberus's own assets on Omega, he now had video of the former. The fact that he was resorting to stealing said footage from Cerberus was intolerable, though, and the Broker made an idle note to either turn or kill the Cerberus agent who had collected the video. He didn't recognize the attached name, but the Broker assumed they were in a position superior to his own agent within that corner of Aria's organization and that was to explain for his person's failing.

If not… well, there were ways to handle that eventuality as well.

As for the Sylléktries, the Broker had known about them hours ago thanks to his agents remembering what they were paid to do and what was supposed to be passed on to their superiors for handling. It hadn't been of any particular concern to him, given that he had no plans for 'Potter' and 'Lovegood' beyond continued observation. He even had a handful of Syllektrión maidens on his payroll, which allowed him to keep an eye on anyone who accompanied them back to Óasi. But if Harper was sending Lawson and Brooks in, that meant a honeypot operation to try and counter the Sylléktries' interest in Aria's new pets.

And while the Broker may not have any plans of his own for Potter and Lovegood, that didn't mean he wanted Harper succeeding in any plans he might have had involving the pair.

"Operative Macaria. I have an assignment for you."

* * *

><p><strong>Taking a page from LogicalPremise, I'm going to write up some sort of essay on the background of the Sylléktries for reader perusal, probably presented in the style of a Cerberus or Shadow Broker report on the group. It will not be required reading, but will give those of you who want a few spoilers - or a deeper understanding - more information than will be presented in the near future.<strong>


	5. Chapter 5

Joe's Note: Not gonna lie, endlessly amused by the few people who come out each chapter to lob a review about how the story 'still sucks' or whatnot. If that's the case, not sure why they're still reading but hey, to each their own. A lot of people will judge an unfamiliar story by a combination of summary, word count, and review count and that last number inches up with each cowardly ball of hatred that someone tosses at me. On that note, guests who leave detailed reviews and want replies? I can't really do much when you don't give me any mechanism of contacting you. Sorry. Finally, kinda surprised at how many fans of _Mass Effect_ don't understand why a human with nothing but precious metals to their name might face problems in a far corner of space. Then again, as Aethyta so succinctly put it, we do have a tendency to be anthropocentric bags of dicks…  
><span>Dedications &amp; Thanks:<span> To Alexander, Nicholas, Vi9, William, Koby, Wil, Thomas, Tracy, Christopher, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on Patreon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing. Additional thanks go to the incomparable LogicalPremise for his amazing set of references covering many untouched facets of the _Mass Effect_ universe, as well as listening to me ramble about ideas for the future of this story.

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><p>Digging an answer out of someone's mind with legilimency wasn't terribly arduous or time-consuming, at least if one knew what they were doing and their opponent's mind was unprotected. If the target had any degree skill with occlumency, that increased the difficulty - and time required - accordingly. Finding multiple answers, on the other hand, was a complete crapshoot. If the subject had a disorganized mind, it was often akin to trying to track down a specific number of needles in an exceedingly large stack of hay… or it could be as simple as plucking consecutive books off a shelf if the user had a highly organized mind. Interpreting any number of answers when one lacked the frame of reference? Damn near impossible, forcing a legilimens to dig even more deeply into their target's mind in search of information to bridge whatever gaps existed between their own knowledge and what they were learning.<p>

While Harry was adept enough when it came to most types of magic - and quite skilled at a number of them - Luna was far and away the superior legilimens out of the two of them. That being said, he knew enough from both book learning and practical experience to not be alarmed as seconds turned to minutes and then to hours, the blonde eventually taking halting steps forward before settling onto Calia's lap without ever breaking eye contact. Three hours in, Krína reluctantly excused herself, citing an early shift at Afterlife the next morning. Four hours in, Harry found himself debating between buying dinner and picking up some groceries so he could cook meals for them himself… only to be yanked rudely from his thoughts as the apartment's door slid open with no warning. Despite the fact that it put Luna in the line of fire, Harry's only cover was the couch and so he reluctantly dove behind it for protection as he drew the pistol Krína had given him and pointed it at… "Aria? And a guest."

Aria smirked and raised her hands in surrender as she stepped through the doorway, a younger-looking asari following behind her hesitantly. Eyes flicking over to where Luna was still perched on Calia's lap, the purple line that graced Aria's right brow inched upward. "When Krína told me that your fiancée's interrogation methods were 'bizarre', I was expecting something magical. Maybe turning her inside out while she was still alive, or turning one of her arms into a dangerous animal that kept attacking her, or… well, anything but this to be honest. What am I missing? I mean, they're not even talking."

"Considering you read Luna's mind while snogging her, you of all people should know that you don't need to ask questions to interrogate someone. Or at least ask them out loud." Harry slowly rose to his feet, holstering his pistol before circling around the couch and studying the mysterious second asari who had followed Aria into his apartment. Or rather, she was the third asari currently in his apartment; Aria was technically the second after Calia. "It's called legilimency; I'll let Luna explain it to you if you're really curious because she's forgotten more about it than I was ever taught."

After eyeing Luna speculatively for a few seconds, Aria nodded. "As annoying as she is, I might take you up on that offer, Potter. Knowledge is power in my business, and I have far more questions than answers right now when it comes to you two." Before she could continue, a winged and horned ball of fluff rocketed across the room, coming in for a landing on her left shoulder. Harry bit his lip to avoid laughing as Aria abruptly went very still, allowing Wednesday to chirp and sniff at her crests several times before circling around to settle on the asari's right shoulder. "Let's start with the question that just decided to use me as a perch. What the fuck is this monstrosity?"

Harry finally allowed himself a brief laugh as he took a seat in one of the chairs that faced the couch, allowing him to split his attention between where Luna was still perched atop Calia's lap and Aria, who was eyeing her passenger suspiciously. The snorkack turned her head a bit, meeting Aria's two eyes with four of her own before bumping her nose against the asari's gently. As Aria sputtered and rubbed at the tip of her nose, Harry decided to take pity on her. "Her name is Wednesday and she's a snorkack. Looking her up on the extranet would probably be a waste of time; snorkacks were considered a myth even by the wizarding world until Luna and my friend managed to capture a pair. Oh, and you might want to be nicer to Wednesday. She's scarily smart, and she's been known to bite people who offend her. Or pee on them."

That revelation made Aria's eyes go wide and then a blue energy field rippled into existence around her body… and Wednesday. The snorkack let out an indignant squawk and shifted from side to side a few times before unfurling her left wing, slapping Aria upside the head with it to express her displeasure. After spending a few more seconds observing the way her barrier formed a bubble around Wednesday - and earning two more whacks from the snorkack's wing - Aria relaxed and the energy dissipated almost as quickly as it had appeared. "There are some old Thessian tales about asari with higher than average eezo concentrations in their bodies who could do bizarre and fantastical things with their biotics. Things that seemed almost… supernatural. If your 'magical' pet can manipulate mass effect fields like a Thessian animal, I wonder if that means-"

"I thought the Sol system was barren when it came to eezo?" While it may have been intended to be a rhetorical question, it was enough to both cut Aria off and draw Harry's attention to the younger asari who had accompanied her. Said asari blushed faintly at the scrutiny before gathering herself and straightening up. "I'm right, aren't I? Isn't that why the Systems Alliance bought so much of it from us immediately after the Relay 314 Incident? They didn't have any of their own and hadn't discovered the deposits in their colonies' systems yet?"

Even though the questions were presumably directed at Aria, the fact that the asari was looking his way made Harry feel the urge to answer… or rather non-answer. "I haven't the foggiest. Probably because I have no idea what eezo is. Maybe you can fill me in while Aria grills Luna about legilimency, Miss..?"

"You don't know who I am?"

"If I did, would I be asking?"

"I… no. Of course not. I just assumed that since you live on this block, you… my name is Liselle. Liselle T'Loak. Aria is my aithntar." While the back and forth between Krína and Calia had allowed Harry to intuit that the term had something to do with asari reproduction and parentage, hearing Liselle name Aria as hers blew most of his theories about the meaning of the word out of the water. His bafflement must have shown on his face, because Liselle opted to take a moment and fill in that hole in his knowledge. "Oh, you actually heard that? Most humans have omni-tools with translators programmed to substitute in 'father'. An aithntar is the parent who doesn't carry the child in an asari relationship. Another asari, a male alien, a female alien, whatever. It's a term that goes all the way back to before asari left Thessia; they decided they needed something to call the non-mother asari when you could have two asari who were sisters and shared both parents but had different mothers."

To a normal human, that might have seemed completely unnatural and mystifying. Mind-blowing. Freakish, even, if they were a Dursley. Fortunately for Harry, the time he'd spent in the wizarding world allowed him to easily comprehend it by framing it in familiar terms: veela. Or better yet, he realized, banshees. After all, Fleur and Gabrielle were quarter-veela while their mother was a half-veela. Banshees, on the other hand, maintained purebloodedness through reproduction. Every child a banshee had was a daughter, who was always a pure banshee herself. When a banshee had a child, it was always a daughter who was always a banshee. The only difference between banshees and asari, then, was that the asari had figured out a way of breeding with each other - and other women - in addition to mating with men.

Aria let out a groan, drawing Harry's attention away from Liselle and back to the pirate queen. "And she wonders why I don't involve her with any of my more sensitive operations; two hundred years old and she still doesn't grasp the concept of 'need to know'. You'd better hope I decide you're worth keeping around, Potter, because that little tidbit of information?" Pausing, Aria gestured from herself to Liselle and back before snapping her fingers, creating a bright burst of blue light. "I've killed better men than you to protect it."

"I've yet to meet a better man than Harry." Breaking the connection between herself and Calia, Luna rolled her shoulders and then cracked her neck before spinning around on Calia's lap, letting her legs drop to rest on either side of the slender asari's as she faced them. "Then again, that didn't take much where and when we came from. Most boys called me cruel names and stole my belongings and out of the few who didn't, Harry's the only one who doesn't cry like a little bitch when I want to go four or five rounds in one night."

Harry found himself blushing at both another example of Luna's chronic oversharing… and the frankly appraising looks that both Aria and Liselle shot his way. Then 'father' and daughter seemed to realize what they were doing, the mutual appraisal turned to disgust, and Liselle found a point off in the far corner of the room to inspect as Aria cleared her throat. "First 'fuck starting' and now I've got the mental image of you and Potter bouncing around inside my head. You're just the gift that keeps on giving, aren't you, Lovegood?"

Interlocking her fingers at the small of her back, Luna grinned coquettishly before arching her back so her chest was thrust out in Aria's direction. "And giving and giving, as long as you treat me nicely." When Aria failed to look impressed with the display, Luna's grin turned into a pout for a fraction of a second and then she was spreading her arms wide as she flopped back against Calia. "That's okay. Calia's probably better in bed than you anyway. After all, according to her memories, being half-salarian means that she needs less sleep and has more energy than someone like you…"

"Hey now, leave me out of-"

"I'll have you know that I was making other asari scream my name back when your species was still…" Aria trailed off, staring at Luna oddly. "Wait, why am I arguing with you? If you think she's a better fuck than me, you'll stop trying to get into my panties."

"I'm just going to put this out there… you didn't strike me as the type to wear panties."

"I don't. It's a figure of speech."

"Good to know." Twirling her wand between her fingers, Luna gave the tip a lick before winking at Aria. "And if you can't figure out fuck starting, you could always meld with me again so I can show you… or I could get Harry to help me demonstrate it?"

Groaning, Aria lowered herself into the other armchair that faced the couch before shooting a despairing look over Harry. "Is she always like this?"

Despite logically knowing that laughing at the person who could have them killed and dumped into space - or killed by being dumped into space - was a terrible idea, Harry couldn't manage to keep from chuckling at Aria's expression. "No. Sometimes she's horny."

"By the goddess. How are you not dead from dehydration yet?" Aria shook her head in disbelief before reluctantly turning her attention back to Luna. "Since I don't like wasting my incredibly valuable time, let's get back to the reason I came down here. Tell me what you've found out about the Sylléktries, Lovegood, and then I'll fill in the gaps."

Before Luna could open her mouth to answer, though, Harry thought back to Krína's reaction to Calia's affiliation and furrowed his brow. "You know about the Sylléktries? Krína made it sound like they were some sort of asari boogeyman… or maybe a ghost story would be a better description."

Aria shot a look his way that reminded Harry distinctly of when he or Ron said something incredibly stupid around Hermione, and then the purple-skinned asari jerked her head in Liselle's direction. "Considering her mother is one, I'd like to think I know a few things about them, yeah." Pausing, Aria looked pensive for a moment and then the corner of her mouth quirked upward. "I almost said she was the result of me fucking one, but I'm still not sure who was fucking who out of me and Pelesa. Turian Sylléktria, everything was about the fight. Half the time, I didn't know if we were brawling or fucking until I felt the meld kick in. Thankfully Liselle doesn't take after her mother, or I'd have a few bruised bartenders from what I hear."

Even as Liselle sputtered in embarrassment, her skin again flushing a darker shade of blue, Harry found himself eyeing the younger asari speculatively. Now that Aria mentioned it, he could see hints of Gavorn's people in her. Her crests were a tiny bit more rigid and splayed than Aria and Krína's, and she was… gangly was a polite way to put it, Harry decided. The revelation had him mentally reexamining every asari he'd so much as seen in passing; he'd written Liselle's differences off to genetic diversity but if she was the result of outside DNA, how many other Sylléktries had he passed here on Omega without even knowing? "Right then, so I guess that establishes your bona fides when it comes to them, but-"

"They're eugenicists like Voldemort, except their definition of superior is… well, impure blood by most peoples' standards. Oh, and their plans tend to involve flattery, bribery, and copious amounts of shagging. Which I think we can all agree is much better than torture, rape, and murder." That brought Harry up short, mostly because 'Voldemort' and 'shagging' were two words that he'd never expected to hear in the same conversation. Also, was it 'copious amounts' by a normal person's standards? Or - more worryingly - by Luna's? Rising to her feet, the blonde circled around behind couch and then leaned down, hugging Calia from behind and resting her chin in the divide between the asari's two bundles of crests. "They've also got a bit of the Order of the Phoenix to them. To make a twenty-nine hundred year long story exceedingly short? Thessia is home to a beacon left behind by the Protheans; I'm not entirely sure who they are but they're evidently important, powerful, and dead. That beacon is the reason the asari are so powerful: they've never needed to invent and innovate like the other species, they're handed the knowledge they need by the beacon."

A loud snort interrupted Luna, Aria lazily turning her head to look over at Harry as she gestured to Luna. "Just so you know, Lovegood is starting to dip into state secrets there. If the Republics find out you know about what they're hiding in the Temple of Athame, they will kill you."

"They can try. Nobody hurts Harry… except me. And that's only after we've set a safeword." Luna scowled at the thought, the tip of her wand glowing an angry red as she twirled it between her fingers again. Then she reigned in her magic and the building energy dissipated, the blonde tucking her wand up behind her ear for safekeeping. "Anyway… one of the first things the asari found inside the beacon was a warning about beings called 'Reapers', who sweep the galaxy clean of life every fifty thousand years. One faction of the asari realized that if the Protheans were wiped out by these Reapers, the asari wouldn't stand a chance against them if all they did was copy the Protheans' technology. So when twenty-seven other matriarchs set out into space their followers, Matriarch Atalania gathered up those loyal to her and left Thessia to find a new home. Somewhere they could prepare for what was coming. Nearly three millennia later, they've become a power that spans several worlds and two systems, have their own order of justicars, four small but distinct fleets, and-"

Even as he nodded in all the right places to nudge her onward, Harry found himself waiting and waiting for an answer that failed to materialize. And so finally he found himself interrupting her in an attempt to steer the conversation toward where he needed it to be. "Where does the eugenics fit into this? For that matter, where do we?"

Luna huffed and rolled her eyes at the question. "Isn't it obvious, Harry? In the eugenics. To make sure their people are as ready as they can be for the coming war, the Sylléktries are seeking out the best of every race. The strongest, the smartest, the most talented biotics… anyone and everyone special. Then they breed them into their population to create stronger soldiers, smarter scientists, et cetera and so forth."

Despite what Snape claimed, Harry was not in fact an idiot. Even he was capable of taking that information and coming to the logical conclusion. "So their plans that involve flattery and bribery and shagging. I'm guessing that it's flattery and bribery which then in turn lead to shagging… that's not shagging for the sake of shagging. They'll be, err, melding. With us. So they can make little magical asari for when their enemy finally comes."


	6. Chapter 6

Joe's Note: I'm trying to keep this story down to neatly digestible chunks, especially since our hosts have seen fit to eliminate pretty much every method of easily saving out stories for mass or offline consumption. Sigh. Accordingly, I took advantage of a natural breakpoint in the discussion to bring things to a sudden halt at the end of last chapter… and now we're going to pick things right back up and finish that discussion. I actually went through more drafts of Chapters 5 and 6 than I care to count because it took me time to realize that this isn't a traditional _Mass Effect_ or _Harry Potter_ story; I can't just assume you guys are familiar with canon and skip exposition. I've created an entire shadow civilization that I need to shine a light on, or else you'll never know what's floating around in my head…  
><span>Dedications &amp; Thanks:<span> To Alexander, Nicholas, Vi9, William, Koby, Wil, Thomas, Tracy, Christopher, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on Patreon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing. Additional thanks go to the incomparable LogicalPremise for his amazing set of references covering many untouched facets of the _Mass Effect_ universe, as well as listening to me ramble about ideas for the future of this story.

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><p>"So their plans that involve flattery and bribery and shagging. I'm guessing that it's flattery and bribery which then in turn lead to shagging… that's not shagging for the sake of shagging. They'll be, err, melding. With us. So they can make little magical asari for when their enemy finally comes."<p>

Straightening up, Luna nodded enthusiastically. "Little green-eyed magical asari! And Lunasari! Obviously Calia doesn't know everything; she has no reason to. But between what I pulled from her mind and the fact that Aria had never heard of people like us? It's a pretty good guess that the International Statute of Secrecy is now an interstellar one. That makes us an incredibly valuable commodity to the Sylléktries. And the more valuable you are, the more you can ask for during the flattery and bribery phase in return for donating to their gene pool. Forget us doing them a favor in exchange for a ride to a human colony, Harry, we're in a position where we could probably get an entire ship from them. Granted they'd probably make it conditional on us knocking up the entire crew, but… well, I suppose we'd just have to grin and bear it for the Greater Good?"

"First of all, for the love of all things holy, never make a reference to Albus Dumbledore during a discussion about sex ever again. Or Grindelwald. Whatever that was. Never ever again." Harry shuddered; those sorts of mental images about the closest thing he had to a grandfather figure were quite possibly the one thing more traumatic than the idea of his parents being intimate. "Second of all, I'm not exactly keen on the idea of getting pimped out to alien women in exchange for… well, anything. Especially since all we need to do is get to a human world, and then-"

"If not for the fact that you seem to enjoy shagging me several times a day, I'd swear you were bent or something." Circling back around from behind the couch, Luna closed the distance between them and flopped down on his lap with a huff. "And I'm not pimping you out to alien women in exchange for something, Harry. I'm pimping you out to mono-gendered aliens with strongly feminine traits."

Groaning, Harry buried his face in Luna's shoulder even as Aria enjoyed a hearty laugh at his expense. And why not? Luna was just a mild irritant to the asari, one that she could peel off and leave behind whenever Aria got tired of dealing with the blonde. Harry, on the other hand, was engaged to her. Which wasn't to say that he didn't love her, because he did. With an intensity that put his past two relationships to shame. But now and then, situations popped up that reminded him that Luna was a very… unique… young woman. Like now, for instance. Both Ginny and Daphne had gotten irate whenever he'd looked at another woman for too long. Luna delighted in it. She'd follow his line of sight, compliment him on his taste, and even point out attractive women for them to admire together. Then ask what Harry thought of bringing said woman home to their bed.

Likewise, Harry was pretty sure that having a baby with another woman - especially intentionally, but even accidentally - would get most men kicked to the curb. Luna, on the other hand, was trying to not only get him to do just that but was hoping to do so herself. Having copious amounts of sex with other women along the way. It left him feeling like he was staring at a conjured bear trap: was Luna just saying stuff like this to test him, and their relationship would implode if he was ever dumb enough to take her up on one of those offers that seemed far too good to be true? Or was she being genuine, and it was just something that appeared to be a trap but really wasn't? In which case… how long would he survive with both Luna and another woman - or two or three, as seemed to sometimes be her wont - in his life?

The chair shifted slightly as someone perched on the right arm and then a hand patted at the top of his head awkwardly. Rather than look up, Harry glanced to the side and found a pair of blue knees. Liselle? "Lovegood's got the broad strokes right but at the same time, she's definitely oversimplifying things. Coming to an agreement with my people can be as personal or as business-like as you want it to be. And no matter what path you choose to walk, you surrendering nothing of yourself but your DNA. They don't own you or control you. I mean, look at my aithntar. I dare you to say anyone tells her what to do."

Harry instinctively raised his head at that, gulping as he met Aria's narrowed blue eyes. Liselle had a point there. While he hadn't known her long, he could quite confidently say that Aria was no one's woman but her own. Or… no one's mono-gendered alien but her own. Was her still the right pronoun there? Hmm. No one's mono-gendered alien but its own? Merlin. He really needed to get in touch with some other humans and fast; his grasp of English didn't seem sufficient for life in the twenty-second century. "As long as I've got you feeling talkative, can you explain the difference? Personal and business agreements?"

"Okay, now you're the one who's oversimplifying things on us. You don't… show up at an office somewhere and then get sorted into one of two lines or something." Liselle frowned, nibbling on her lower lip gently for a few seconds before continuing. "I meant more that you can either treat it like you're bartering in the markets here for a new gun, omni-tool, or other material belonging… or treat it more like an arranged marriage that requires you to have at least one child. You can treat it like a… goddess, what's it called? I heard a human talking about it with the Patriarch just last week. A… sperm bank? You come to an agreement with the Sylléktries, they pair you with a matron they think is compatible with your genes, you meld, you leave with your payment, and they raise your daughter without you ever being a part of her life."

Given that his desire for children was part of the reason that he and Ginny hadn't worked out, Harry didn't find that option particularly palatable. "And since you're here on Omega with your, err, aithntar instead of wherever the rest of the Sylléktries live, I'm guessing there are other options."

Liselle nodded, gesturing to Aria. "My mother visits for two weeks every other month but I'm Aria's until I'm a matron. Then I return to Óasi and become a productive member of society, whatever form that may take. If Aria wasn't who she is? She could have chosen to come live on Óasi or one of the colony worlds with my mother. Considering you don't really have a place anywhere, that might be something for you two to think about." Pausing, she looked back and forth between Harry and Luna uncertainly. "Although the fact that you're a couple might complicate that. I've never heard of an entire couple being recruited, but I'm sure they have procedures for it. Maybe they match you with prospective mothers who already live near each other? Or one or both of them are forced to pack up and move for the good of the community? Not sure, but I'm sure they'd find a way to make it work if you wanted to become Sylléktries. If you do? Ask to live on Óasi. There are enclaves for positively everything there, including a few species that you won't find anywhere else in Council space." Leaning in, she lowered her voice. "I've never seen them, but my mother claims there are even rachni living in the southern mountains…"

While her tone made it clear that her revelation was supposed to be significant, Harry had no clue why and so he added it to the top of his 'to research since Hermione's not here' list. "Well when you put things like that, they doesn't sound nearly as bad." Harry shifted in his seat, one hand shooting up to rest on the small of Liselle's back as he noticed her tipping slightly to her right from his actions. Then Luna's hands shot out to capture one of the Sylléktria's, and Harry found himself wondering if it would have been better to risk the young asari falling off onto the floor. The soft growl from Aria's direction certainly made him think so.

To be honest, Liselle had actually managed to address the majority of his non-relationship related worries with her answers. After discovering the full extent of Dumbledore's machinations, Harry had no desire to be under anyone's thumb to that degree ever again. Knowing that his life wouldn't be reduced to stud service for random asari or indentured servitude in exchange for a short-term boon was a relief. Especially given that he'd been in this new time for all of a day so far; the idea of having options taken away before he even knew what they were rankled.

It was also good to know that he would have freedom of choice regarding any daughters he had. Given that he couldn't see himself cutting the mother of his child - whoever or whatever she may be - out of his child's life, there would probably be some relationship problems in his future… or maybe not. If Luna was indeed genuine about her desire to welcome other women into her life, the worst he might have to deal with is bickering over right side versus left and sleeping on the inside versus the outside of a bed big enough for four. Because if he did agree to this, the odds of Luna voluntarily giving up her 'space babe' were somewhere around the Cannons' chance of winning the League Cup… and it would be awfully rude to allow Luna's asari to sleep with them while banishing his Sylléktria to a separate room…

That was his story and he was sticking to it.

"I still have a lot of questions that I'm going to want answers to, and some things I need to research on my own. And I'll probably do my best to find an unbiased source that backs any answers you give me; after all, everyone always tries to cast themselves in the best possible light." Harry's gaze swept from Liselle past the still glowering Aria and onward to Calia. After all, while the former was a helpful source of information, the latter was their minder for the group. Or assigned watcher. Point of contact, at any rate. "Say I agree to this, though. Was Luna being serious when she said we could ask for an entire ship from your people?"

"No, I was being Luna. Sirius was your godfather."

"…that's your one time for the day. Remember what the penalty is for doing it again." Luna's eyes went wide and she pantomimed zipping her lips, making Harry smirk faintly before turning to his conversation with Calia. "The question stands, though. What sorts of things do people ask for in terms of payment? Compensation? Is there a way to phrase that so I don't feel like I'm being studded out to you?"

Calia let out something more giggle than laugh at that and then shook her head. "After what I saw of you and Luna, I think stud is about right in your case. As for the ship? In your case, it's possible. I don't remember anyone ever getting that much of a… reward for services rendered… in the past, at least for a single child agreement. Then again, I've never heard of both halves of a couple being targeted for recruitment together either, much less a couple that represents an entire new subspecies of a race. The more I think about it, though, the less outrageous it seems. My father was just a smarter than average salarian, and the Sylléktries hollowed out an asteroid for him and outfitted it with everything he needed to keep running his experiments for the remaining fifteen years of his life. Mind you, he melded with five asari in one day to earn that but again, average salarian versus only two specimens of a new subspecies of humanity. I think you've got the advantage going into negotiations. Especially considering who they're sending." Leaning forward, Calia looked both ways before grinning conspiratorially. "You've attracted so much attention that Matriarch Luciana herself is coming to Omega to meet with you two."

That revelation elicited a gasp from Liselle and a string of curses from Aria that Harry's omni-tool either couldn't or was too polite to translate. He looked from one asari to the next, and then finally vocalized his question when it became clear that nobody was going to volunteer an answer. "What? Is that bad? Good? I don't know who she is."

"That makes at least four of us, Potter, probably five. Matriarch Luciana is a ghost among ghosts, even to someone with my resources. Except for the fact that she exists, nobody can tell me anything about her… including Pelesa. It's not that she won't. She can't. Even her own people know next to nothing about her. But all of a sudden, she's willing to come out of hiding. To talk to you. Here, on my station. Fucking wonderful." Aria abruptly rose to her feet, thrusting her hand out to stop Liselle when she likewise made to stand. "No. I need to do some thinking. Get some of my advisors together. You're safer here than anywhere else for right now, since I'm going to have to put some extra protection on Potter and Lovegood." Turning, Aria stormed out of the apartment, the door quietly sliding shut behind her.

Silence reigned for a few seconds and then Luna abruptly rose from Harry's lap, tugging gently on Liselle's wrist and sending the asari sprawling across Harry's lap to take her spot. Groaning in mortification, Harry glanced down at the wide-eyed Liselle - absently noting that tentacles that made up her crest varied in length in the exact same way as Gavorn's fringe - before returning his attention to his wandering fiancée. Luna didn't wander far, though, throwing herself down in the chair that Aria had vacated before drawing her wand and flicking it. A deck of cards flew out of one of their open trunks, and she plucked it out of the air with a grin. "Strip Exploding Snap, anyone?"

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><p>"This one must confess, she is curious why you instructed Scout Yaan to use old encryption protocols that we know have been cracked-"<p>

"By Cerberus and the Shadow Broker before them? It's actually quite simple, Epipsychidion: if they don't know what we've found and that we're coming, they won't be there to meet us. And according to our mole within their organization, Cerberus has reacted exactly as I predicted they would: they have dispatched the very operative I have been investigating on a mission to stop us from getting our hands on Yaan's prospects." Bringing her mug of hot chocolate up to her face, High Matriarch Luciana slowly inhaled through her nose and took a moment to savor the aroma before meeting her companion's eyes. "I must say, I was surprise to hear that you chose to accompany me yourself rather than delegating the task to another justicar."

Remaining stiffly at attention and motionless, Justicar Mistress Epipsychidion was silent for so long that Luciana would have thought her asleep or perhaps even dead if not for the slow pulses of light running down the length of her crest. Finally, after nearly two minutes of silence, Epipsychidion spoke. "This one has been contemplating her place in the greater order of things as of late. My justicars have no Ardat-Yakshi to watch over, no fugitives to hunt, no conflicts to defuse. While we have tools to navigate by, we are a ship adrift at sea with no course to follow. And so it makes me wonder if it is selfish of us to continue to exist merely out of a sense of tradition. Our materiel could be used by the military proper. My followers, likewise."

Luciana raised a brow at that; she couldn't honestly say she was surprised by the admission, having picked up on the thoughts when they first started forming several years ago thanks to the gifts inherited from her aithntar. Why Epipsychidion was bringing them to her now, though, was another question entirely… one that she did not know the answer to. "And what does that have to do with your desire to accompany me?" The matriarch's brain worked furiously, rejecting theories almost as fast as she could form them. But the more possibilities she dismissed, the more Luciana found herself coming back to one that - while on the surface seemed utterly illogical - could very well be the truth. "Your oaths forbid you from taking a mate and having a family."

"This one has been contemplating the matter for some time but yes, Scout Yaan's discovery has made it a more pressing matter. What these two humans can do is unlike anything this one has ever seen, and she has spent centuries mastering biotic powers known to as few as your true face." The pulses of light beneath the skin of Epipsychidion's crest began to grow more frequent, other colors occasionally mixing themselves into the more common blue-white. "While there is nothing in her oaths that would stop this one from exploring the potential of Potter and Lovegood… yes, those same oaths would stop her from being a part of bringing that potential to our cause."

Sipping at her hot chocolate, Luciana realized that she didn't disagree with anything Epipsychidion was saying. The justicars were indeed an antiquated, unnecessary part of modern Sylléktrion society. They were a waste of resources, and since being a justicar was still seen as incredibly prestigious? They were also a waste of some of the best genes their society could offer up. Dissolving them would free up everything from ships to well-trained warriors to prime genetic samples; as it stood, justicars refused to serve as even aithntars, much less mothers of future Sylléktries. As for the more personal aspect of Epipsychidion's request? What she was proposing would be a pairing of great value: the daughter of one of her peoples' most gifted biotics and a human with 'magic' would be truly fearsome when she came of age. But… her position gave her precious few opportunities to have a sense of humor, and there was no way she was going to pass up an opportunity to have a bit of fun at her longtime friend and bodyguard's expense. "You've never even met a human before, Epipsychidion, much less these particular humans. And you're asking for permission to destroy a fundamental aspect of our society so that you can throw yourself at them? I could have sworn that you were a matriarch, not some hormonal maiden. What's next, that purple armor of yours ending up crumpled at the base of a pole in some strip club?"

"This one notes that you have brought a rather interesting selection of dresses along on this mission." The corner of Epipsychidion's mouth quirked upward as she looked off to her left at where Luciana had hung a sleek black number from a hook mounted on the wall of her cabin. "This one posits that she is not the only one interested in behaving like a 'hormonal maiden' with someone she has never met, much less spoken to before."

Luciana rolled her eyes before thrusting out her left arm. The teal biotic aura unique to her particular breed of Sylléktries coalesced around her forearm and hand, and then a datapad sailed across the room and into her hand. Twisting slightly, she pulsed her biotics again and sent it flying toward Epipsychidion, who caught it neatly and activated it. "This one dares you to say that you wouldn't find this particular human interesting too."

After staring at the screen for a few seconds, Epipsychidion looked up and offered Luciana a full blown smirk. "This one prefers blondes."

* * *

><p><strong>Having made it this far... yes, Luna now knows more than Harry about the Sylléktries. As do Calia and Liselle for obvious reasons, and Aria for an equally obvious one. If you've got questions, Harry will likely have them too. Drop a review and you might see Harry asking your question - and getting an answer - in Chapter 7.<strong>

**PS: Currently running a poll on my profile page regarding the future of one of my _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_/Marvel crossover stories. If that's something that interests you, you might want to wander over there after you review this chapter.**


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